EU antitrust chief eyes up data-hoarding US tech giants

The European Commission's antitrust boss has flagged up concerns about what she describes as the invisible "exchange rate between data and services," thereby signalling to tech giants hoarding vast amounts of user information that they are now on her radar.

Margrethe Vestager told attendees at the DLD conference in Munich on Sunday that competition officials at the EC—which is the executive arm of the European Union—were continuing to examine claims that antitrust rules may have been violated by a small number of tech firms.

"We continue to look carefully at this issue, but we haven't found a competition problem yet. This certainly doesn't mean we never will," Vestager warned.

She noted that the commission had previously looked at two merger cases, where antitrust concerns had been raised. However, following close scrutiny, Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and Facebook's buyout of WhatsApp both got the go-ahead from officials in Brussels.

Vestager added that data issues did not, and should not, be linked only to investigations into alleged privacy abuses. The commissioner explained:

I'm glad that companies are working together to standardise privacy protection on the Internet. But that shouldn't be done in a way that makes it harder for smaller players to compete.

The same goes for big data. I'm not talking about individuals’ personal data as such, but the huge collections of information that companies can use to understand their environment in a way they never could before.